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EDITORS’ NOTES

Band of Brothers is the much-anticipated follow-up to Willie Nelson’s 2013 album To All the Girls…, his first Top 10 set in more than three decades. Band features 14 new recordings, including nine brand-new songs written by Nelson himself. The remaining five tracks include Nelson’s interpretations of Vince Gill’s “Whenever You Come Around,” Billy Joe Shaver’s “Hard to Be an Outlaw” and “The Git Go” (a duet with Jamey Johnson), and Gordie Sampson and Bill Anderson’s “The Songwriters.” Producer Buddy Cannon again joins Nelson, assisting in the writing and recording. (The sessions were held at Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville, with additional recording at Nelson’s Pedernales Studio in Austin, Texas, and The Hit Factory Criteria in Miami, all between October 2013 and March 2014.) Highlights include personal numbers like the deeply felt title track, the album’s first single “The Wall,” and “I’ve Got a Lot of Traveling to Do,” which, for Willie, means more business as usual for country music’s most loved and dynamic star.

EDITORS’ NOTES

Band of Brothers is the much-anticipated follow-up to Willie Nelson’s 2013 album To All the Girls…, his first Top 10 set in more than three decades. Band features 14 new recordings, including nine brand-new songs written by Nelson himself. The remaining five tracks include Nelson’s interpretations of Vince Gill’s “Whenever You Come Around,” Billy Joe Shaver’s “Hard to Be an Outlaw” and “The Git Go” (a duet with Jamey Johnson), and Gordie Sampson and Bill Anderson’s “The Songwriters.” Producer Buddy Cannon again joins Nelson, assisting in the writing and recording. (The sessions were held at Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville, with additional recording at Nelson’s Pedernales Studio in Austin, Texas, and The Hit Factory Criteria in Miami, all between October 2013 and March 2014.) Highlights include personal numbers like the deeply felt title track, the album’s first single “The Wall,” and “I’ve Got a Lot of Traveling to Do,” which, for Willie, means more business as usual for country music’s most loved and dynamic star.

TITLE

TIME

Bring It On

2:54

Guitar In the Corner

3:56

The Wall

3:29

Whenever You Come Around

4:13

Wives and Girlfriends

3:02

I Thought I Left You

3:02

Send Me a Picture

3:59

Used to Her

2:47

The Git Go (with Jamey Johnson)

4:08

Band of Brothers

2:51

Hard to Be an Outlaw

3:09

Crazy Like Me

3:17

The Songwriters

3:16

I've Got a Lot of Traveling to Do

3:18

14 Songs, 47 Minutes

Released: Jun 16, 2014

℗ 2014 Sony Music Entertainment

About Willie Nelson

Even before he became the Red Headed Stranger, Willie Nelson was already a Nashville songwriting legend, providing Patsy Cline with her 1961 signature tune, “Crazy.” But as a fledgling performer in his own right, the clean-cut honky-tonker’s humble approach and conversational croon was increasingly at odds with mainstream country music’s tilt toward variety-show glitz. Upon joining the post-hippie roots-music radicals taking over the Austin scene (and swearing off barbers forevermore), the Texas-born Nelson became an icon of the ’70s outlaw-country movement, favoring a stripped-down style that could both evoke desert-highway vistas (“On the Road Again”) and initiate the most intimate of conversations (“Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”). But Nelson’s brand of down-home simplicity shouldn’t be confused with dogmatic purism (he’s also no stranger to adult-contemporary crossovers, like his duet with Julio Iglesias, “To All the Girls I've Loved Before”). Rather, he’s always searching for the most direct route to the soul of a song, whether he’s elevating the country standard “Always on My Mind” to the realm of modern hymn, or bringing a wistful, lived-in wisdom to Great American Songbook perennials like “Georgia on My Mind.” In the 21st century, Nelson’s outlaw ethos has continued to manifest itself in all sorts of surprising ways: He’s become America’s most visible pro-marijuana activist and Snoop Dogg’s unlikeliest duet partner.